I Must Confess…

I have been less than focused during this Christmas break.  In fact I’m just now going to wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I’m just now hearing the latest edition of The Bachelor is coming on–2 hour special–whaaaaaat?!  🙂 –so easily distracted!  I hate to admit my addiction, but I can’t stop myself from watching!!  Then back to work tomorrow…bye, bye rest and relaxation.  I really enjoyed your visit.

Now onto something more productive and helpful…

I meant to share this a lot earlier, but like I said…I haven’t exactly been focused…

In case you are teaching clock time soon, I wanted to share this fun idea you can do daily, and it doesn’t take a lot of your class time.  First,  hand out different times on cards to your students that are in 5-minute intervals starting out with when students are in class.  Leave out any times that students are out of the classroom like lunchtime and recess.  For example, if students arrive at school at 8:00, begin writing times on your cards like 8:05, 8:10, 8:15, 8:20, etc.  Then give one card out to each student.  Instruct your students to yell the time out when the clock hands are on the card’s time no matter what is happening in the class.  The student can interrupt anything while yelling out the time.  While this sounds disruptive, it surprisingly isn’t.  Students are so proud to tell the time and end up watching the clock all day.   If sitting in cooperative groups, students watch for the times of the other kids in their group, too, giving them extra practice.  I used to do this with simple index cards and wrote the times on them with a marker.

Since then, I have made them prettier and they are for sale on TPT in my time unit.  One of  the teachers at school who printed these put them on colored card stock, colored the border with marker, and hot glued them to a popsicle stick.  Whether the cards are pretty or whether they aren’t, the kids love this activity.  This can be repeated for several days if you just pass the cards around to different students so that students get practice with a different time.  You can also differentiate by giving the easier o’clock and half past times to your struggling learners.

I hope you can have fun with this in your class like I have mine :